'THE PUPPET MASTERS'.....THEY'VE GOT YOUR BACK......IN THE WORST WAY

The Puppet Masters (1994)     We could practically apply everything we said yesterday about "Deep Rising" to this one too........

                   Derivative in the extreme, it's a shameless sci-fi mishmash of  'aliens-possess-humans' movies, with the extra slime and goo of 'Alien' and John Carpenter's 'The Thing' thrown into the mix......

                   Yet it came with a high pedigree, taking its inspiration and random chunks of plot from a classic alien invasion novel by sci-fi master Robert A. Heinlein.......not that anyone would get their hopes up about this being an intelligent, literate film.

                   You can forget that idea.......like 'Deep Rising', this movie aspires to nothing more than an amusement park thrill ride that celebrates its own trashiness........with chases, shootouts and loads of grisly alien slugs that attach to your back, pump you up with extra adrenalin and turn you into a mindless zombie bent on world domination.

                      Or as we said of the 'Deep Rising' premise.......Wooohooooo!

                      'The Puppet Masters' almost never stops for a breath, all to its benefit. That way, you hardly notice the still human characters are not much more fleshed out than the ones with the goo-slugs hitching a ride on their backs. So you don't even blink an eye when, in the course of the film, countless unfortunate slug victims get shot, run over or fall off high places,,,,,,,,.fortunes of alien-human war, we suppose.....

                       A few bright lights shine here through all the pulpy junk.......mainly Donald Sutherland as imperious government bigwig in charge of battling the slugs, which sometimes involved giving a determined slug-zombie a good whack with his cane......

                       The rest of the cast is made up of well worn familiar faces, who never make much of an impression, what with all the violent slug slaughtering going on....... One exception though:  the film's designated leading man/hero played by Eric Thal.....

                         In moments of distress or violence, Thal spends a lot of time with his mouth open wide in a perfect 'O'......so it's a tossup as to whether he's angry, in pain or on the verge of delivering an aria from 'Rigoletto'.

                         Silly, stupid, and unbelievable to the max........and that pretty much sums up why we gorged on 'Puppet Masters' the same way we chomp on Kettle Chips.  We know it's not good for us, but damn it, it's still fun to watch. 3 stars (***)